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Khodor ibn-Samun al-Michindi
Khodor ibn-Samun al-Michindi was the first Michindi caliph of the Hisuuani Caliphate. Khodor was born in the year 4842. He served as a Magi in the city of Haison under the supervision of then Ayayba'dhja Basma bint-Abra. He married Ester bint-Dahab, fathering three children. Khodor during his reign became known as a spiritual caliph of the people. His stabilizing rule reinstated the majesty of the Caliph after the chaos of the later Safferid. In a way, Khodor had a hand in the legal dethronement of the Safferid family from power and the declaration of a Shura, despite the Safferid Caliph having applicable heirs to the throne. His connections and relationship with Ayayba'dhja Basma used the precedent of upholding a poor Vizier-al Shura as the first legal grounds to depose a caliph and their line. Background Khodor was born to an educated middle-class family in the city of Haison on the 25th of Aram, 4842. The second of four children they represented the urbanized branch of the lesser Michindi clan. His father, Samun ibn-Yalel was a praised ulama - jurist - who frequently worked in both the courts of the Caliph and the Wāli-Emirs. At the age of eighteen he pursued higher education with the Magi and eventually took the oaths as a Magi of the Ayba'dhja Asiaha'wabha. At the age of twenty-two he married his wife Ester bint-Dahab, herself a daughter of an urbanized lesser-clan; the Wahabid. The couple had four children through their marriage: Alima, Yahya, Dinah, and Taif. Khodor's career as a Magi became highly decorated, winning the favor the Ayaba'dhja Basma bint-Abra, who placed him in the court of the Safferid as her representative of the cult in imperial policy. It was through him that the Magi were able to deconstruct the rampant decadence of the Safferids and construct the case by which to charge and usurp the Safferids. Political Power Although not trained as a jurist like his father, Khodor had a workable degree of legal education such that he was a flexible and powerful force in the usurpation of the Safferids. At the will of Basma he acted nearly autonomously to assume the council of ulama and together gather the support of courtly nobles, servants, and attendees to present and defend their case to the over-throw of the Safferid. With the support of the court at large and with his connection through the Sun and Moon cult across the realm he was able to peacefully oblige the Safferid caliph to denounce his own throne and to retire his clan into the desert. The following Sura after was almost unanimous to elect Khodor as the new Caliph. His legitimacy was further supported by the Ayaba'dhja who reported promising visions of him and his blood. The claim was backed by the heavy prestige of the Magi in court affairs with what was seen as the lapsing of divine authority in the Safferid and their apostasy. Khodor's ascension to power was not wholly respected by nearly all the Safferid. In retaliation the Banu Sahlid attempted a complete cleansing of the Banu Rasferid, who had been the faction holding power then. Although Khodor managed to rescue the Banu Rasferid faction the civil conflict caused between the Caliphate and the Sahlid had caused significant damage to the Safferid tribe, crippling any further and future advances to power. Khodor's action against the Safferid was heralded as a campaign of punishment by his supporters who distributed the story that Khodor was the sword of the goddess' against apostates. Although in his later years he would dismiss the national myth in the name of enforcing internal stability to quell endemic infighting by enforcing solid rule-of-law. His rule of solidarity pierced the heart of the Hamalfite state. Though the Safferid were defeated and reintegrated into the national tribal rule left-over factions from Safferid rule still remained. The last Safferid governors had survived the transition of the central state from one dynasty to another, these individuals continuing to practice the pagan folk practices put in place by the Safferid government. Combining military and legal means Khodor deposed these remaining individuals and obligated the remaining pagan court in Haison to retire. His rule of solidarity lasted as long as he, though despite the strong treatment of polytheistic groups in government Khodor was most at ease with them in the general society. Although hardly ever praising them, he stopped at publicly denouncing his regime's social rivals, fearing social discord if he did indirectly become a proponent of informal apartheid. Socially his rule is looked back at as an easing of the tangled, diverse promotions of the Safferid clan to a refining of support once again to the Ayba'dhja Asiaha'wabha. But even in this he tentatively provided patronage to several movements within the larger cult, such as those pertaining to the Abstraction, Shafati, and Zaqafi movements; schools of Hamalfite thought fundamentally mystical. Rule as Caliph The overthrow of the Safferid dynasty and his crowning as caliph occurred on Noruz, 19, 4883. Of the immediate concerns of the newly appointed Caliph was the pacification of the unruly Safferids, angry at their legal and political usurpation at the hand of the Magi and a recovery of general faith and condition of the realm. The then forty-one year old caliph had little trouble with the later, being a remarkably public man who became a renowned a popular public speaker with a regular habit of monthly personal sermons and spiritual lectures covering all sorts of topics from the relationship of the secular with the sectarian, and the moral foundation of the law. His talks guided less as an affirmation of royal power but as public lessons, he finding a generally: "... well versed public to be the most enlightened as subjects, and the most agreeable". While he wrangled with the military implications of an insurgent clan, he also dealt with policies regarding public education of not only in the city but in the psuedo-nomadic clans and tribes which made up Haison's internal population. His public relations did not end with lectures and sermons in the public squares but extended as well as encouraging a public presence in court politics with the addition of public galleries in the palace throne room. Voldranian Policy The arrival of the Voldranians in the Hamalfite year of 4897 brought to the then fifty-five year old caliph a new external factor to worry about in his political agenda. Having pacified the Safferids and restoring a state of sanity and stability to the realm, the Caliph's foreign policy could have been often cited as loose; preferring to not perform any substantial policy on the matter and whose most significant ruling had been the issue of a tariff on salt imported into Hisuanni. But the substantial colonizing of nearby and known territories sent alarm through Hamalfite political circles, afraid that they may be subjugated by foreigners. Of immediate concern to the Hamalfite and their traders were the nearby Scauv settlers in what is now New Scavoran and the foreign colonists taking root in Aea. Khodor initially dismissed the alarm saying: "There is no fear for refugees." Khodor took the situation into his hands and opened his ports to the Voldranians, accepting some limited engagement in diplomatic missions between themselves and the "Refugee Nations", as Khodor observed. Given their general size and manpower compared to that of the Hamalfites - as he observed - he did not feel at the time they would pose a substantial long-term risk for the realm. Though while after, the significant implications of the Nether War brought with the Voldranians and the implications of it - as the Voldranians being refugees of the crisis in Old Voldrania - soon rose its head in the court and haunted every question pertaining to them. The daunting specter of what was beginning to turn into criticisms over wanton and casual magical abuses on the physical world began to root themselves while Khodor maintained his open doors policy. Two years after their arrival and the formation of diplomatic and political organizations between the nations soon expanded the regional implications of their arrival as not being a scattered number of local matters but a wider regional matter that changed the political fabric of the archipelago landscape. Choosing to avoid any future conflict between these powers, Khodor made a strong statement endearing Haison to strict neutrality and non-involvement in the "Refugee Nations'" conflicts. While the dawning Voldranian Question posed a substantial foreign policy hurdle to climb for the succeeding members of his dynasty to maneuver through, the initial arrival of these nations in his later rule helped to absolve the complications of his last domestic matter from his transition to power: the re-establishment of Hamalfite economic strength as left repressed by the later Safferids. The outbound trade to provide commodities to these peoples greatly helped to rebuild a waning Hamalfite trade economy. The Domestic Question While the issues of transition ruled the fore-front of Khodor's mind the implications of the non-Hamalfite provinces within the greater realm held no doubt a great question to the Caliph and his court. None so greater than the wider problems with The Mire. The Mirefolk had long deprived from autonomous rule with a long line of Haison-appointed emirs who ruled the province with an iron, military-backed grip. Not wanting the Mirefolk to take the early civil-war as an opportunity to break away Khodor recalled the Vice-emir of the Mire and allowed in his place a local aristocrat to rule the Mire as a subject of the crown in Haison. While this move commanded The Mire to act as any other province in the realm and still had the same legal constrains of being over-ruled by the Caliph should local politics run against the grain of policy in Haison it greatly helped to appease the local cries for autonomous rule in the province and affirmed the political relationship between the Mire and them in building a relationship with the local rulers of the Mire and Haison itself. Though while local politics changed in the Mire, the garrison of soldiers there did not. Category:New Voldranians Category:Characters Category:Hamalfite Category:Politicians Category:Leaders Category:Deceased